To record an album championing Dorothy Howell and her contemporaries giving listeners around the world the chance to hear their music.
We want to record an album championing the music of Dorothy Howell and her contemporaries, because listeners around the world need an opportunity to hear music by these unjustly neglected yet fascinating figures in early twentieth-century British music.
The centrepiece of the album will be Howell's String Quartet in D minor, rescued twice from oblivion: once from the elderly composer herself by her quick-thinking niece and nephew, who stopped her destroying her papers in a fit of despair, and then by broadcaster and author Kate Kennedy, who found a rough pencil sketch for the piece tucked inside other scores. The Berkeley Ensemble's viola player, Dan Shilladay, spent a painstaking summer reconstructing Howell's sketches and the piece has been a firm favourite of the ensemble and its audiences ever since. Like everything on the programme, it has never been recorded before.
We need your help to ensure these incredible pieces of music can be experienced as widely as possible:
Dorothy Howell String Quartet in D minor (8’)
Dorothy Howell Adagio and Caprice for violin and piano (9’)
Tobias Matthay Piano Quartet in C major, Op. 20 (20’)
John Blackwood McEwen Nugae, seven bagatelles for string quartet (15’)
Marie Dare Phantasy Quintet for strings in C minor (9’)
Over the last 16 years we have built a reputation for championing neglected repertoire, and our previous recordings have received glowing reviews, including BBC Music Magazine album of the month and a Gramophone Award nomination. For this project we’re teaming up with pianist Simon Callaghan and award-winning producer and engineer team of Matthew Bennett and Dave Rowell to record at SJE Arts, Oxford in August 2024. The album will be released and distributed by EM Records with a launch at the English Music Festival in May 2025.
The total cost of this project is £16,500 which covers everything from the musicians, recording engineer and producer to the recording venue hire and the digital and physical distribution of the finished album.
Without support it can’t happen.
This project successfully funded on 18th July 2024